Farmer warns others after diesel thefts

KINGFISHER, Okla. — We are all feeling the pinch at the pump these days.

Gas prices continue to stay high and they don’t seem to be going anywhere.

Now, one Oklahoma farmer said those high prices are driving thieves his way.

Rodney Mueggenborg is a third generation farmer in Kingfisher County.

Wednesday morning, he came out to his land west of Kingfisher and saw the gas cap to his tractor 10 feet away in the dirt.

“It was laying right there,” Mueggenborg said. “So I went and looked in my tank and the tank was empty. So then I started my tractor up and my fuel light was flashing. I got robbed!”

More than 100 gallons of diesel fuel had been siphoned from Mueggenborg’s John Deere tractor.

“I thought, I don’t remember taking that cap off. But they got me,” he said.

Mueggenborg said he had parked the tractor in the field just south of Highway 33 the night before.

He believes the thieves targeted it because it was parked along a gravel road.

“You can’t find tire tracks in this gravel,” Mueggenborg said.

He called the Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Department and filed a report.

“We’re doing some checking in to see, you know, what might take place, how you know you would transport that a large amount of diesel and what type of containers you would need for that so that’s kind of where we’re at right now,”Justin Conner said, Kingfisher Sheriff’s Department.

Mueggenborg wants to warn other area farmers.

“I know there’s thefts all over the world but we farmers are trying to help feed the world,” he said.